hanage?" she repeated. "Oh, not without consulting me.
And besides there's so much to be done in this house before
tomorrow.--Susan! Susan!" She went out, calling more impatiently.

As Hattie disappeared into the vestibule, that door from the passage,
upon which she had kept a watch, was opened, slowly and cautiously, and
the tousled head of a boy was thrust in. Seeing that the drawing-room
was vacant, the boy now threw the door wide, disclosing nine other small
heads, but nine more carefully combed. The ten were packed in the narrow
passage, and did not move forward with the opening of the door. Their
freshly washed faces were eager; but they contented themselves with
rising on tiptoe to peer into the room. About them, worn over black
cassocks, hung their spotless cottas. Choir boys they were, but on every
small countenance was written the indefinable mark of the orphan-reared.

Now he of the tousled hair stole forward across the sill. And boldly
signaled the others. "St!--Aw, come on!" he cried. "What're you 'fraid
of! Didn't the new minister tell us to wait in here?"

The choir obeyed him, but without argument. As each cotta-clad figure
advanced, eyes were directed toward doors, and hands mutely signed what
tongues feared to utter. One boy came to the sofa and gingerly smoothed
a velvet pillow; whispering and pointing, the others scattered--to look
up at a painting of a bishop of the Anglican Church, which hung above the
mantel, to open the Bible on the small mahogany table that held the
center of the room, to touch the grand piano with moist and marking
finger-tips, and to gaze with awe upon two huge and branching
candlesticks that flanked a marble clock above the hearth.

Now a husky whisper broke the unwonted silence of the choir; and an
excited, finger directed all eyes to the painting of the Bishop: "Oh,
fellers! Fellers!" He rallied his companions with his other arm.
"Look-ee! Look-ee! That's Momsey's father!"

"Momsey's father!" It was the tousled chorister, and he plowed his way
forward through the gathering choir before the hearth. "What're you
talkin' about? Momsey's father wasn't a minister."

But the other was not to be gainsaid. "Yes, he was," he persisted; "and
it's him."

"Aw, that's a Bishop,--or somethin'. There's Momsey's father." Beside
the library door stood a small writing-desk. Atop it, in a wooden frame,
was a photograph. This was now caught up, and went from han